Ocean and Coastal Community Modeling in the Cloud: A Sunny Solution to Overcoming Challenges

Ocean and coastal modeling is of critical importance to NOAA’s mission of science, service, and stewardship. Challenges include communication and collaboration across NOAA and external partners, access to funding and resources, and community engagement. NOAA’s US Integrated Ocean Observing System and its partners have developed a Coastal Modeling Cloud Sandbox as a solution to these problems. The sandbox is a community research and development platform with shared access to cloud computing and data storage for researchers from NOAA and external partners to develop, test, and improve existing models while overcoming traditional limitations associated with on-premises computing.

The sandbox also allows for configuration testing, cost analysis, and efficiency benchmarking, which will enhance future model development. The sandbox was designed to match the operational NOAA Research and Development High Performance Computing system configurations, but has also incorporated specific user needs for various model runs.

The University of Washington’s ROMS-based LiveOcean model was the first model successfully run in the sandbox. Recently, NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services began running the ADCIRC-based CORA model, and the University of Notre Dame and NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey are working to run the ADCIRC-based STOFS-2D-Global in the sandbox. Future projects include the NOAA Operational Forecast System models and the Office of Water Prediction’s National Water Model. The FVCOM-based Northeast Coastal Operational Forecast System (NECOFS), the SCHISM-based Southeast Coastal Operational Forecast System (SECOFS), and the ROMS-based East Coast Community Ocean Forecast System (ECCOFS) are planned to run in the sandbox for research to operations development.

Key strengths of the sandbox include collaboration within NOAA and across academic and industry partners, providing resources to community modeling efforts, and prioritizing user engagement. The sandbox will enhance development and the research to operations transition of ocean and coastal models. It is an example of what the future of community model development and transition could look like, emphasizing the importance of timely dissemination of results to communities directly impacted by coastal hazards.